On Monday (April 23), Chatham-Kent Council officially approved the location for Gateway Casinos & Entertainment Limited’s Cascades Casino, which is scheduled to open in mid-2019. The move will ultimately see slot machine gaming that is currently taking place at Dresden Raceway cease.

According to an article by Blackburn News, the application for site-plan control for the proposed facility was approved during a Monday council meeting.

The report has cited Gateway Casinos & Entertainment Limited CEO Tony Santo as saying that construction on the facility will probably begin this spring.

An artistic rendering of the proposed Cascades casino in Chatham-Kent (Image courtesy Gateway Casinos & Entertainment Limited)

In speaking about the process from here on out, Chatham-Kent Mayor Randy Hope was quoted as saying, “It’s about us getting the site plan approval, getting the Government of Ontario to give the final sanction and then they can get in the ground. If we’re lucky, within ten months we’ll be welcoming a new casino with 200 jobs, plus the spin-off jobs, plus the new revenues coming into the municipality.”

Hope also commented on Dresden Raceway in the article, as he said that, “We’re going to continue to build those relationships. We’re going to continue to build a relationship with Dresden to deal with the harness racing and promote harness racing and get it back on the map where it should be.

“This needs to be a win for everybody.”

(With files from Blackburn News)